Rosette Swap

I am delighted to participate in the Rosette Swap that Gypsy Brocante is hosting. (You KNOW how I love rosettes!!) And I was even more delighted to get this darling package in the mail!

How lucky am I that Jill from Jill Ruth & Co got my name?!! It's so much fun to get a pretty package in the mail. Us bloggers look at pretty things all day long in the virtual world (what? - You don't spend ALL day on blogs?), but it's so much better to get pretty gifts by old fashioned snail mail.

A little denim, a little burlap and a pearl too - I'd say it's got ME written all over it! Thank you, Jill (Jill Ruth) for the lovely rosette!! And thank you Jill (Gypsy Brocante) for taking on the monumental task of hosting a swap while on vacation!!

Paperie Party

A couple months ago Rebecca at Vintage Living sent me one of her Word Birds and it inspired me to create a few birds of my own.

This one has vintage rosy giftwrap so she was named Rosy.

And this one has part of an old sewing pattern for her wings.

This was my first attempt at a paper shoe. I sorta cheated though. My daughters new shoes had a plastic form in them so I papered over the form.
Have you made any paper projects lately?

Come on over and show us!

Texas Shows & Chicken Pox

It's almost time for Marburger!

And yes the kids woke up today with chicken pox!

But they should be fine by the time we leave in a month.
According to the doctor it's a "modified" case because they both had the chicken pox vaccination.

A Month! I'm so excited for this years trip to Round Top/Warrenton and Marburger Farms!

Of course I can't wait for all the junk gorgeousness! It's like junk heaven.

But this year Mr. Blessing and I will be sharing a house with some friends!
We are especially excited to have some time to spend with them.

And you KNOW how I feel about getting to the Magnolia Pearl tent!
We are in the most fun business! And this is the best business trip ever!

Now we just have to pray for a fast and furious case of chicken pox.

What Love means to a 4-8 year old . . .

A friend shared this with me and I just had to pass it along.
What Love means to a 4-8 year old . . .

'When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn't bend over and paint her toenails anymore. So my grandfather does it for her all the time, even when his hands got arthritis too. That's love.'
Rebecca- age 8


'When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. You just know that your name is safe in their mouth.' (this is i my very favorite!)
Billy - age 4


'Love is when a girl puts on perfume and a boy puts on shaving cologne and they go out and smell each other.'
Karl - age 5


'Love is when you go out to eat and give somebody most of your French fries without making them give you any of theirs.'
Chrissy - age 6


'Love is what makes you smile when you're tired.'
Terri - age 4


'Love is when my mommy makes coffee for my daddy and she takes a sip before giving it to him, to make sure the taste is OK.'
Danny - age 7


'Love is when you kiss all the time. Then when you get tired of kissing, you still want to be together and you talk more. My Mommy and Daddy are like that. They look gross when they kiss'
Emily - age 8


'Love is what's in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen.'
Bobby - age 7 (Wow!)


'If you want to learn to love better, you should start with a friend who you hate,'
Nikka - age 6 (we need a few million more Nikka's on this planet)


'Love is when you tell a guy you like his shirt, then he wears it everyday.'
Noelle - age 7


'Love is like a little old woman and a little old man who are still friends even after they know each other so well.'
Tommy - age 6


'During my piano recital, I was on a stage and I was scared. I looked at all the people watching me and saw my daddy waving and smiling.
He was the only one doing that. I wasn't scared anymore.'
Cindy - age 8


'My mommy loves me more than anybody You don't see anyone else kissing me to sleep at night.'
Clare - age 6


'Love is when Mommy gives Daddy the best piece of chicken.'
Elaine-age 5


'Love is when Mommy sees Daddy smelly and sweaty and still says he is handsomer than Robert Redford.'
Chris - age 7


'Love is when your puppy licks your face even after you left him alone all day.'
Mary Ann - age 4


'I know my older sister loves me because she gives me all her old clothes and has to go out and buy new ones.'
Lauren - age 4


'When you love somebody, your eyelashes go up and down and little stars come out of you.' (what an image)
Karen - age 7


'Love is when Mommy sees Daddy on the toilet and she doesn't think it's gross.'
Mark - age 6


'You really shouldn't say 'I love you' unless you mean it. But if you mean it, you should say it a lot. People forget.'
Jessica - age 8


And the final one
The winner was a four year old child whose next door neighbor was an elderly gentleman who had recently lost his wife.
Upon seeing the man cry, the little boy went into the old gentleman's yard, climbed onto his lap, and just sat there.
When his Mother asked what he had said to the neighbor, the little boy said,
'Nothing, I just helped him cry'

Pushing Buttons (on the camera)

The kids are back to school! Of course, for a homeschool mom that news is not nearly as exciting as it might be for "regular" school moms. I'm still on the fence, really. I like having some structure to our day and that the kids are more contained but, of course, I don't care for sitting in a classroom any more than they do. It's a balancing act - making school enjoyable for them and still being able to get my work done. Schooling at home changes everything about our day but we do it because it changes everything about our kids too. It's a different way of living.

That said, I think I'm mourning the end of carefree Summer days, just a little bit. So I consoled myself on Sunday afternoon with some photography playtime. Just walking around the house and experimenting with various settings...

I love this one of a rusty hinge.

Rusty seems to be a theme with me.

Roller skates and tutus (I have no idea why they're in the dinning room)

Our bazillion pound resting lady (she nearly got us arrested in the airport when we were trying to bring her back from vacation a few years back).

I was really going for a more "crisp" clothes pin but the sun was setting quickly so I didn't have much time to play.

I love that moment... the one that hangs somewhere between sunshine and sunset.

...Like the evening between Summer and the first day of school.

I love to play with my camera and I try to learn more every chance I get. When I need help, I visit Ree at Pioneer Woman. She has a whole bunch of realistic and helpful photography tips. Go once and you'll be back visiting her blog often. But I'll warn you, the day will slip by as you go from one post to another... from cameras to cooking and all sorts of farm escapades. It's a whole different world over there. They are, afterall, a homeschool family.

Stolen Photos?

Earlier this week I posted about a beautiful but unusual website that I had come across. We were all perplexed a little by the English/Korean layout (Here's the best translation of the site that I've gotten yet. Thank you Anne Marie!) but then it became obvious to myself and many of you that the website has "borrowed" images from Flickr.

So a few of us did some investigating. I found 7 of the photos used on that site at 5 different Flickr accounts and the pictures most certainly did not belong to dress-form.co.kr. It was so obvious in fact that most of you would recognize the true photographers names immediately. Then a friend of mine tried to place an order from the site to see what would happen and the site requested her social security number! Use caution when you're ordering online from this or any other site. There should never be an occassion where a retail site needs your social security number!

If your Flickr photos have been "borrowed", typically you could send the site a cease and desist letter if you can find contact information but this particular site is out of the country so it's not likely anything would come of it. Since Flickr can't do anything if the abuse is taking place outside of Flickr, I did a little online research (keep in mind of course that I'm not a lawyer)... You can report it to the Yahoo copyright and intellectual property Agent. Flickr is part of Yahoo so they might be able to help. Here are the details for how to do that. And you can file a DMCA Complaint with Google to have the website removed from the search engine results page. However in this instance, as you would guess, when you google "dress-form" a bazillion results come up and the website in question isn't in the top couple pages anyhow.

Although it doesn't seem like there's much any of us can do, I felt compelled to at least post a warning. And to ask you who have helpful advice or who have been in this circumstance before to leave a comment. Please tell us if you know - what can be done to prevent online photo theft? And is there an effective reporting agency to contact if your photos are stolen?

Let's have an old fashioned townhall meeting...

Perplexing

Yesterday afternoon I came across a link to this scrumptious looking site...

But I'm very preplexed by it. So perplexed in fact that I was even thinking about it in the middle of the night.

The ever so darling buttons are in English but all the descriptions are in (I think) Korean.

I visited the Question & Answer page but found myself more confused. Of course, I couldn't read a lick of it so I don't know what kind of answer I was expecting.

It might not matter so much but for the fact that there are links for "login" and "join". It's just not fair to make something so cute & and to lure us in with little bits we can understand... And then tempt us to join. I want to join! I don't have the slightest notion what this site is about, but now I want to join!

Can you imagine - a website about dressforms that you can join?!

Vintage Wiring

Yesterday I was on the phone with my mother-in-law when Mr. Blessing jumped in front of me and breathlessly declared, "The electrician has to knock out the ceiling, ok?"

Hmmm... I'm not exactly sure what response he was looking for!
But after hours of having a very patient professional working on our "vintage" wiring, we have power again! The garage door opens, the bathroom light goes on and off when it's supposed to, and the circuit doesn't blow when we run the microwave and the dishwasher at the same time. And only a small portion of the ceiling is missing! However, since we've had a bit of a mess around here, I thought I'd show you something pretty from my mom's house...

She decorated her dinning room chairs with aprons for our Sunday dinner!
And Mr. Blessing gave me little gift today to make up for the mess.
Yep, it's a key to the messy house!

He got it at our little local hardware store but you can get your own here.

Barn Chick

Generally speaking, most people who know me would say that I'm old fashioned, Victorian, into girly lacy stuff. And generally speaking, they would right. But, as I've mentioned recently, I have discovered that I have a bit of Barn Chick in me!

So I was very delighted when I was asked to be part of the Barn Chick party at Brayton Homestead Interiors. We're all posting pictures of our favorite barns.

This is one that I just had to share... Our family passes this odd barn every July on our trip up to Door County but we have never come to a consensus on who would put their house on top of the silo - and why. It appears to be abandoned now but once upon a time, some creative person had an awesome view of the sunrise.
We had a barn when I was growing up and I suppose that might have influenced my love of old barns. But truth be told, my favorite barns are the ones that have big ol barn sales!
How about you? Do you have a favorite barn?
Pop on over and check out the other Barn Chicks...